Archive for Daily Graphings

Yesterday, Major League Baseball’s Twitter account tweeted a link for something called the Home Run Derby poll. I was curious. I had never heard of this being a thing before, so I wanted to take a look. The group chosen for the unofficial voting is a confusing group to say the least. The poll is unofficial, which already makes it sort of odd, but the candidates for it were not optimally chosen. Once I investigated a little further, I realized why — it’s released way too early in the season.

Major League Baseball has been conducting this poll since at least 2011. So right away, we know that the ballot that fans are voting on right now is not the result of some feeling out process. To cut right to the chase, here’s the ballot we’re working with this year:
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Thursday was an ordinary day for Cincinnati center fielder Billy Hamilton, in that it contained some extraordinary things in the Reds’ 4-3 loss in 12 innings at the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Leading off the top of the first, Hamilton dropped a double into shallow left, and a few minutes later he stole third without a throw, putting him in position to score on a sac fly. He wouldn’t reach base again, but in the bottom of the ninth, he did keep things tied, robbing Travis Snider of a possible walk-off, extra-base hit. On the catch, Hamilton managed to leave visible cleat marks on the side of the fence.

The Reds ultimately lost, but the game captured Hamilton in a nutshell. Early in the season, all the talk was about how Hamilton was embarrassing himself at the plate against big-league competition. Some points were arrived at too hastily. Some points were overlooked entirely.

Sure, at the start, Hamilton was dreadful. In the season’s opener, he went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts. Below is a swing he actually attempted some weeks later.

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If you’ve recently tried to get your first job, you may know something about the furious catch-22 involved. How are you supposed to get experience if you need experience to get it? There’s a little of that in getting your first major league job. Go out there kid, don’t worry about those major league pitchers, and the crowd, just be comfortable. We’ll talk about whether or not you start tomorrow, tomorrow.

Sounds like a recipe for pressing. And if you talk to Corey Dickerson and Charlie Blackmon, the remedy is simple: a more defined role. Which comes after success, mostly. Round and round we go.

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Think if you will, for a moment, about Jose Fernandez. What’s impressed you most about the healthy Jose Fernandez? Probably, it’s all the strikeouts, many of them coming on his breaking ball. This year, Clayton Kershaw has Jose Fernandez’s strikeout rate. Now veer off and think instead about Koji Uehara. The most amazing thing, probably, about Uehara is his impeccable command. This year, Kershaw has Koji Uehara’s walk rate. Finally, think about Tim Hudson. Hudson is among the league’s premier groundball specialists. He’s always been armed with a devastating hard sinker. This year, Kershaw has Tim Hudson’s groundball rate. This year’s Kershaw basically had the first three picks in the pitcher ability fantasy draft, and that explains how he’s allowed just 18 runs in ten starts, with seven of them coming in one.

None of them came in yesterday’s. Technically, Clayton Kershaw finished with a no-hitter, and not a perfect game. Realistically, he threw 1.037 perfect games, going above and beyond in the way that Armando Galarraga previously went above and beyond. And unlike with Galarraga, this wasn’t a start that came out of nowhere — with Kershaw, there was a sense of inevitability. You analyze his Wednesday start and you realize he didn’t do anything differently. He pitched like Clayton Kershaw, and this version of Clayton Kershaw was going to end up with at least one start of this kind. It was more a matter of when and where.

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Yesterday, the Cubs reportedly offered Jeff Samardzija a five year, $85 million extension, a deal that would allow him to remain in Chicago rather than get traded at some point in the next five weeks. Samardzija turned it down without even countering, and it’s now basically guaranteed that he’ll end the season in another uniform. Samardzija’s rejection of the Cubs offer does raise an interesting question for interested buyers, though; just how much is he going to cost in order to sign with a team that trades for him?

The Homer Bailey contract is reportedly the benchmark deal that Samardzija’s agents are working off of, which covered $105 million over six seasons. Because Bailey was already in line for a $10 million arbitration payday regardless, the extension was for five free agent years at a total cost of $95 million, but any new deal for Samardzija would buy out his final year of arbitration as well, making the total contract the more relevant figure for comparison. And it would make sense that his agents would use that deal, as it is a very recent deal for a pitcher with a very similar career. Behold.

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For all of the natural ebbs and flows of individual player performance, the game’s ruling class — the elite of the elite — is a fairly closed society that remains fairly static from year to year. Any given season might have its Yasiel Puig, or its Albert Pujols conceding his seat. But the core membership is fairly predictable. What might happen in any given year, though, is one of these elite players taking a temporary step up in class ‚ reaching an even more rarified air than before. This week, let’s take a deeper look at the 2014 performance of some of the game’s elite and determine whether they have taken things to the next level. Today: Giancarlo Stanton.

Stanton has hit for big power since he arrived on the major-league scene in 2010 at age 20, after decimating the minor leagues to the tune of a .272-.365-.565 line, with 91 homers in 1,226 at bats. Some guys gradually grow into their power, but not Stanton. At the major-league level it’s been more of the same, with Stanton posting a career .270-.359-.542 line despite playing his home games in one of the more pitcher-friendly ballparks in the majors.

Based on my own park factors, which were calculated utilizing granular batted ball data, Marlins Park was the third most pitcher-friendly park in MLB last season, with an overall park factor of 90.2. It was the fifth most pitcher-friendly park with regard to fly balls (76.1) and eighth most with regard to line drives (96.2). It had a home run park factor of 68, dead last among MLB parks. Does this affect Mr. Stanton? Well, no, as most of his home runs would leave Yellowstone with room to spare.

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Which pitcher in baseball has the best fastball? Aroldis Chapman. This isn’t one of those everyone’s-opinion-is-valid situations. The answer is Aroldis Chapman. While I’ll grant that the real, absolute answer is unknowable, based on the things we know, Chapman has the best heat, and that’s basically why he’s long been one of the best relievers. He’s thrown a slider, too, to keep people honest, but he’s thrown it just often enough for honesty, and he’s thrived with the heater. He’s the owner of the fastest pitch thrown in the PITCHf/x era.

So you can imagine what it’s like to face Chapman in the box. I’m kidding, it’s unimaginable, and you should be thankful for that, because you don’t want to experience what those players experience. Imagine preparing for that kind of fastball. Imagine not knowing where it’s going to be. Imagine having the sense that maybe, just maybe, he’s going to throw a wrinkle. But you basically have to sit fastball. There would be two worst nightmares: a fastball high and tight, and a changeup.

Uh oh.

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Because Hanley Ramirez sucks at playing defense, baseball will not officially recognize Clayton Kershaw’s effort tonight as a “perfect game”. But I would like to submit that if this doesn’t qualify as a perfect game, nothing should.

28 batters came to the plate; 15 of them struck out. Of the 13 who managed to put the ball in play, nine of them hit the ball on the ground. One of the four balls hit in the air didn’t leave the infield. His FIP for the game was -0.24, because the model isn’t designed to handle dominance at this level. His xFIP was 0.19.

Here is the full list of nine inning outings with a Game Score of 102 or better, since 1914.

Kerry Wood: 105 (9 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 20 K)
Clayton Kershaw: 102 (9 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 15 K)

That’s it. That’s the entire list.

Clayton Kershaw did not retire every single batter he faced tonight, so technically, he wasn’t perfect. Screw technicalities, though; what Clayton Kershaw just did was far more impressive than going 27-up, 27-down and relying on your defense in order to do it. Clayton Kershaw just threw one of the most dominant performances in the history of baseball.

It might not have been perfect. It was better.

While the trade deadline in recent years has proven anticlimactic and at times outright boring, this year is going to be different. This year, the best pitcher moved at the deadline won’t be Jake Peavy or Matt Garza. With no offense intended to either, neither one is a real frontline arm like the crown jewel of this summer’s trade season: Tampa Bay Rays ace David Price.

With the Rays all but officially out of playoff contention — they currently hold just a 1.7% chance of reaching the postseason — it’s essentially a guarantee that Price will be moved before the trade deadline. And Price is going to be the best pitcher traded mid-season in years.

Sure, Zack Greinke was dealt from Milwaukee to Anaheim in 2012, but Greinke wasn’t quite at the level that Price has established over the last few years. Not only has he been one of the game’s best pitchers, but Price has done it in the AL East, and while the division might not be what it once was, teams won’t have to worry about whether Price can handle pitching against the best hitters in the American League. Left-handed #1 starters don’t hit the market very often, and Price even comes with an extra bonus; he’s not an impending free agent.

Often, players of this caliber are only traded with a few months to go before they reach free agency. Greinke was shipped from Milwaueke to Anaheim with just a few months left on his contract, for instance, and the mid-summer market is often flooded with rentals who will only be around for half a season. Price, however, won’t be a free agent until after the 2015 season, and so any team acquiring his rights won’t just get him for this playoff race, but for next year as well. And that extra year of team control is going to allow the Rays to ask for the moon.

If your favorite team wants to acquire David Price this summer, I hope you’re not too attached to any or all of their best young players, because the Rays are going to demand a king’s ransom in exchange for a year-and-a-half of Price’s services. But there’s a catch, and it’s one of the reasons why the Rays didn’t accept of the offers they received for Price over the off-season. While any team that acquires him will own his rights for 2015, the arbitration process has ensured that a large percentage of teams wouldn’t be able to afford him next year anyway.

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It’s fairly safe to say that Arizona manager Kirk Gibson doesn’t care for Ryan Braun that much. Braun torched Gibson’s Diamondbacks in the 2011 LCS, just before Braun was found to have been taking some form of PEDs. The suspension, repeal fiasco, and Braun’s name coming up in the Biogenesis scandal never sat right with Gibson and he’s been a vocal critic ever since.

This fact and this fact alone could be the reason D-Backs reliever Evan Marshall threw at Ryan Braun twice in a row, hitting him the second time and earning an ejection. It could have been compounded by the fact that Brewers starter Kyle Lohse hit two batters himself earlier in the game. It could have to do with the two batters that were hit the night before. There could be a lot of reasons for it, but one thing is clear; the Diamondbacks playing tough-guy baseball was a bad move as far as the numbers go and ended up costing them the game in this case. Read the rest of this entry »